Twitter briefly down across much of planetLONDON (AP) — People across much of the planet briefly experienced problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site. The San Francisco-based company acknowledged the problem, saying in a statement that its engineers were “currently working to resolve the issue,” although it didn’t go into further detail. It is the second time in just over a month that th...

Raul Castro: Cuba willing to sit down with USHAVANA (AP) — Cuban President Raul Castro said Thursday that his government is willing to mend fences with bitter Cold War foe the United States and sit down to discuss anything, as long as it is a conversation between equals. At the end of a Revolution Day ceremony marking the 59th anniversary of a failed uprising against a military barracks, Castro grabbed the microphone for apparently impromptu remarks. He echoed previous statements that no...

Landslides kill 7 in northern VietnamHANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Disaster officials and state media in Vietnam say landslides and flash floods triggered by Typhoon Vicente have killed seven people, including three in a single family, and left three others missing. Official Lai Thanh Huyen of Tuyen Quang province in northern Vietnam said Friday that landslides following heavy rains buried a 28-year-old woman, her five-year-old daughter and four-month-old son early Thursday while they we...

Milosevic ex-ally to become Serbia’s PMBELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — As Serbia’s parliament prepared to elect Ivica Dacic as prime minister, the former wartime spokesman for Slobodan Milosevic tried to dispel concern that his government could push this country back into the nationalism of the late strongman’s era. Ivica Dacic — who had earned the nickname “Little Sloba” in the past for his admiration of the former Yugoslav president — pledged once again in his speech to the lawmakers on ...

Palestinians in Syria get pulled into civil warBEIRUT (AP) — Like other communities sucked into Syria’s widening civil war, the Yarmouk neighborhood in Damascus has seen death and destruction. Soldiers and snipers have gunned down demonstrators. Some protesters have taken up arms to fight back. But there’s one key difference: Most of Yarmouk’s residents are not Syrian citizens. They are Palestinian refugees. Since the start of the unrest, Syria’s half-million Palestinians have struggled to...

Top general, friend of Syrian president, defectsBEIRUT (AP) — Fighter jets unleashed sonic booms and helicopter gunships strafed rebels as they pressed their fight Tuesday into new neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Farther south, ground troops combed Damascus after the nearly complete rout of the largest rebel assault yet on the capital. After a series of setbacks, President Bashar Assad’s forces are solidifying their grip on Aleppo and Damascus, knowing that their fall would a...

Eyes on London: London raring to go, trains not LONDON (AP) — Around the 2012 Olympics and its host city with journalists from The Associated Press bringing the flavor and details of the games to you: READY TO GO! After years of preparation work, organization chief Sebastian Coe says London is ready and — like an athlete — raring to go. “We’re now in the last of the call rooms. We’ve gone from the training track to the warmup track to the stadium. The volunteers are in place. The city is dr...

Hundreds of Palestinians face eviction from landRAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli Defense Ministry wants to evict hundreds of Palestinians from eight hamlets in a West Bank area the military has designated as a firing zone, rights activists said Tuesday, portraying the decision as a new Israeli land grab. The firing zone, one of several in the West Bank, covers several thousand acres close to the border with Israel. Hundreds of Palestinian herders and farmers live there for part of the...

China’s newest city is on tiny island, has big aimBEIJING (AP) — China’s newest city is a remote island in the South China Sea barely large enough to host a single airstrip. It has a post office, bank, supermarket and a hospital, but little else. Fresh water comes by freighter on a 13-hour journey from China’s southernmost province. Welcome to Sansha, China’s expanding toehold in the world’s most disputed waters, portions of which are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and other neighbo...

248 human fetuses found in Russian forestMOSCOW (AP) — Villagers in Russia’s south Urals region have stumbled upon a gruesome discovery — four barrels left in a forest containing 248 human fetuses, prompting an official probe, officials said Tuesday. Police in the Sverdlovsk region said the fetuses, preserved in formaldehyde, were kept in barrels with tags marked with surnames and numbers. The fetuses were found a few miles away from a highway linking the region’s capital, Yekaterinb...

9 killed in attacks after deadly Iraq dayBAGHDAD (AP) — Bomb attacks in Iraq killed nine people Tuesday, officials said, a bloody aftershock to the country’s deadliest day in two years that followed the declaration of a new al-Qaida offensive. Police said an explosives-rigged motorcycle killed six Kurdish intelligence officials on a late afternoon security patrol in the northeast town of Tuz Khormato, located 210 kilometers (130 miles) north of Baghdad. A local medic confirmed the de...

Syria revolt reaches Aleppo; rebels target citiesBEIRUT (AP) — Riding a wave of momentum, Syrian rebels made a run on Aleppo Saturday in some of the fiercest fighting seen in the country’s largest city, which has been a key bastion of support for President Bashar Assad over the course of the 17-month-old uprising. The rebels also took over a third border crossing — and the second one along Syria’s frontier with Iraq — another sign the regime’s tight grip on the country is wobbling. The fight...

Indian upheaval bares Colombia’s nagging conflictTORIBIO, Colombia (AP) — One of the stiffest blows in years to the prestige of Colombia’s military wasn’t inflicted by its leftist rebel foes and didn’t claim a single soldier’s life. It was dealt by a relatively diminutive people called the Nasa who marched furiously up to the top of a 7,500-foot (2,300-meter) peak last week and forcibly dislodged a clutch of soldiers from a strategic outpost. These verdant, craggy mountains are the Nasa’s an...

Norway’s tolerance tested on massacre anniversaryOSLO, Norway (AP) — Norway’s commitment to face xenophobia with tolerance on the first anniversary of bomb and gun attacks by a confessed right-wing killer is being put to the test by hostile reactions to an influx of Gypsies from Eastern Europe. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg says he has been disturbed by the tone of the debate over the small camps of makeshift huts set up by Gypsies in Oslo and other Norwegian cities. After neighb...

Thousands flee as Syrian rebels wage guerrilla warBEIRUT (AP) — Rebels pressed their guerrilla fight to topple Syria’s regime deeper into the capital on Friday, ambushing troops and attacking police stations as thousands of terrified civilians fled to Lebanon and Iraq to escape some of the worst violence of the 16-month conflict. The two-day death toll was more than 470 people, marking some of the deadliest of the uprising. The U.N. refugee agency said between 8,500 and 30,000 Syrians had ent...

Israelis bury 5 victims of Bulgaria attackJERUSALEM (AP) — Devastated mourners grasped at dirt atop fresh graves and screamed in agony Friday as they buried the five Israeli victims of a bombing in Bulgaria — an attack that Israel has blamed on Iran and its proxy group Hezbollah. Two days after the deadly blast in a popular vacation spot, investigators in Bulgaria and in several other countries were still struggling to confirm the attacker’s identity. Bulgarian prosecutors said the at...

Attack on Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria kills 7SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Israel vowed to strike back at Iran for a brazen daylight bombing Wednesday that killed at least seven people on a bus full of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. The bombing was the latest in a series of attacks attributed to Iran that have targeted Israelis and Jews overseas and threatened to escalate a shadow war between the two arch-enemies. Iran has denied involvement in the past but did not comment on Wednesday’s attack....

UK police accuse 3 of Pakistan terror trainingLONDON (AP) — Three British Muslims - including a convert who was featured in a documentary about radical Islam and a former London police support officer - have been charged with traveling to Pakistan for terror training, police said early Thursday. Scotland Yard said in a statement that Richard Dart, 29, Imran Mahmood, 21, and Jahangir Alom, 26, had traveled to Pakistan between 2010 and 2012 “with the intention of committing acts of terroris...

Clashes spread to new areas in Syrian capitalBEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces attacked rebels with helicopter gunships in the heart of Damascus on Tuesday, escalating a campaign to crush their opponents as clashes spread to new areas, illustrating the rebels’ growing reach. Cracks of gunfire and explosions echoed inside the capital for a third day, including a firefight near the country’s parliament, in an unprecedented challenge to government rule in President Bashar Assad’s seat ...

Roadside bomb kills 12 Shiites in PakistanPARACHINAR, Pakistan (AP) — A minibus carrying Shiite Muslims hit a roadside bomb in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 12 of them in the country’s latest apparent sectarian attack. The incident took place shortly after the victims left Spai, a predominantly Shiite village in the Orakzai tribal area, said local government official Jamil Khan. They were headed for the nearby district of Kohat, he said. Pakistan is a majority Sunni Musl...